NCAA Ripping Off Student Athletes

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Throughout the United States there are hundreds of colleges in which students participate in sports. There are colleges where they play tournaments, with these being as big or bigger than many professional sports tournaments. However, despite these athletes generating absurd amounts of money to their schools, they don’t receive any payments by the league or even their colleges. Despite being given free education and a place to live at, college athletes should be paid by their schools.

Student athletes generate millions of dollars for their schools by means of jersey sales, game tickets, television deals, etc. According to Forbes, the NCAA has a deal in which ESPN pays the NCAA $600 million annually to broadcast college football. Also, according to an ESPN Analysis of U.S. Department of Education Equity in Athletics Data, the men’s basketball team of Louisville, one of the best basketball schools in the United States, made a $24.4 million dollar profit after the 2014 season. This means the team has millions of dollars to spare to give to the students. However, they chose to keep this profit and make the students fend for their own.

Student athletes are given free education; however, a small percentage of these students take school seriously. The NCAA requires athletes to have a GPA of 1.8 or higher to be able to compete. According to now NBA player and ex NCAA player for Louisiana State University, Ben Simmons, after he got that 1.8 GPA he never went back to classes. This is the same for major athletes in big colleges.

There are some exceptions to this, however there aren’t that many. According to Catherine Campbell from The New York Times, “College athletes do worse in school than their non-athlete counterparts.” She conducted a research in 84 different D III schools with over 83,000 students being tested. Non-athlete students had an average of 3.04, while walk on athletes and recruited athletes had an average of 2.97 and 2.84 respectively. D I program athlete’s GPA is lower since sports is their main priority. Having free education for these athletes means nothing. They spend significantly more time in the gym or traveling for games rather than being in class. They don’t learn anything in school and just overall waste their time doing homework and assignments that won’t help them at all.

The NCAA is a business. They generate billions of dollars every year. However, they don’t allow students to earn any money. The NCAA rulebook states, if any student wants to play they can’t have any outside sponsorship deals or sell their own products. For example, LaMelo Ball lost his eligibility to play for UCLA after he released his signature shoes, the MeloBall 1s. He now plays for a semiprofessional team in Lithuania called Vytautas where he gets less exposure. The NCAA monopolizes players and makes them work for them for free. The NCAA knows the players won’t get much exposure in other league, so they purposefully abuse this fact and take advantage of the players.

There are other leagues being created around the world for students that want to skip college. The NBA has a rule called the One-and-Done Rule. This means that every prospect who wants to go to the league must have graduated one year or more previously from high school before being eligible to enter the league. So instead of signing some contract worth millions in the NBA, they must spend a year in college where they don’t get paid at all. The JBA (Junior Basketball Association) was created by Lavar Ball, father of Los Angeles Lakers points guard Lonzo Ball. He created this league for high school prospects to get paid up to 10k dollars a month, so they can get an alternative way other than college “[Lonzo] Ball says he would have skipped his year at UCLA if his father’s JBA had existed at the time”. Top college prospects typically come from struggling families and therefore would highly chose to skip college and earn money immediately. The NCAA must pay the athletes because while in college, it’s very hard to earn money, especially considering the little free time they have. The only option these players have is to skip college and go to a league like the euro league or the previously mentioned JBA. if continues to happen then the NCAA may lose on millions of dollars due to top prospects not wanting to go to college and people wanting to watch better players in other leagues.